Wedding Layouts – Getting Ready

Here are the layouts I designed for the first couple pages. I tried really hard to keep everything in chronological order (the order the pictures were taken in) but sometimes pictures needed to be moved around to tell a better story. I also included some examples of the Photoshopping (OK this may not actually be a word but I use it as one) I did on the pictures in these layouts.

This was an end of the night shot but I thought it made a great two page spread.

 

The small photo on the bottom is of our invites.

 

The majority of the book has black backgrounds but they looked to harsh for these getting ready pictures so I used white instead. I tried to avoid using colored backgrounds so they wouldn’t distract from the pictures and because black and white will never go out of style.

 

These are my two favorite bridal pictures. The one with me looking down was actually taken later in the day while bustle was being done but it fits much better here. Below you can see how I Photoshopped the background to match the bouquet shot.

 

I used very little wording throughout the album for two reasons. One, wedding photos are very self-explanatory. Two, I was having small parent’s albums made so only large text would be readable in their albums. Here I did write out the something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue out because it explained the charms in my bouquet and so I could show off the blue crinoline my mom made me.

 

After showing people our album, this spread got a lot of compliments. Probably because of the great top hat photo Libby took.

 

I wanted to use a lot of different types of photos on this page so I had to come up with a creative way to lay them out. In the bridal family spread I used a thick light blue line, similar to our invites & programs I made, so here I wanted to add a similar colored line.

 

I used the eyedropper tool to pick a green color from the grass behind the guys.

 

The photographers had fun with my husband’s little brothers. I had to include this funny series of pictures. To give it a little something more I added lines that fade away.

 

The fading lines are actually a line shape with a gradient overlay. In your toolbar select the shape button (typically a rectangle tool) and select line tool. Set the line thickness you want and draw the line. You’ll see the shape layer of the line you just created under the layers tab. Then you just click the blending options button (it looks like a scirpty “f” in a circle) and select the gradient overlay. You can change the direction of the overlay and different colors you want to blend together.

 

Here is the original picture that was taken right before the reception while my husband was bustling my dress.

 

I wanted to use the photo next to this gorgeous bouquet shot but the black background looked too harsh. So I used the lasso tool select the grassy background from a shot taken at same location of the bouquet shot and stretched it out behind my veil in the other shot. I got rid of the black background by using the magic wand tool. Then I trimmed up the edge by deleting the thin black line left over along the veil by hand using the eraser tool.

 

The photo didn’t quite make it across the page so I finished off the picture by extending the veil and my shoulder. To do this I used the clone stamp and copying and pasting parts of the original picture blending it with the eraser tool set to a light opacity.

 

An original photo of me with my mom and sisters.

 

I corrected a few minor things and increased the contrast for an overexposed look. Then I added a slight Gaussian blur (under Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) to give it a soft angelic look. It may look a little intense on screen but on the metallic album pages is really pops!